It's worth treating the rep's statement with a great deal of skepticism; the chances that this one person is completely aware of everything the company is doing seems pretty remote.

Seriously, who is stupid enough to believe that a minimum wage earning rep in a call center had access to the knowledge that they were doing this, and no one has leaked a memo about this on the internet.

TuteTibiImperes:Headso: internet folks need to get on it like the NRA does and start punishing every single official who votes against net neutrality or even speaks against it, time to ruin careers.

I have very little positive to say about the gun lobby, but you're right, dang it if they aren't effective.

Companies like Microsoft, Google, and obviously Netflix are in the pro-net-neutrality camp, so there's some big money to make a push.

Man I'd love to see some 'senator x thinks your internet provider should be able to cut off your access to nNetflix, amazon, and your other favorite sites. If you enjoy choosing where you go on the internet vote to protect it' ads

rwhamann:What's frustrating is end consumers defending it because their "team" says net neutrality is anti-competitive and hurts jobs, and they just go,along with it. Tribalism is awesome,,eh?

I don't think any consumers want to kill net neutrality. This is a game being fought between Google, ms, Netflix, etc and Verizon, att, time warner, Comcast. Its mega corps vs mega corps. No one involved gives a fark what the consumers think.

NickelP:rwhamann: What's frustrating is end consumers defending it because their "team" says net neutrality is anti-competitive and hurts jobs, and they just go,along with it. Tribalism is awesome,,eh?

I don't think any consumers want to kill net neutrality. This is a game being fought between Google, ms, Netflix, etc and Verizon, att, time warner, Comcast. Its mega corps vs mega corps. No one involved gives a fark what the consumers think.

Isn't this in the realm of Restraint of Trade laws? If they decide to hobble their service to make their own products more appealing then they are stripping their service if the value I payed for. I mean, fark, $5 for a pay-per-view movie? Sorry, you guys don't have a farking catalog to match what I have in my Ikea cabinet, let alone the deep catalogs of Netfilx or Amazon Prime.

And if you really hobble Amazon's primary website I'll sue you personally for hobbling my ability to sell product to customers. And I'll make the form a simple cut-n-paste for every single Amazon Marketplace dealer to file suit. We will make you bleed the death of a thousand cuts.

Comcast has been doing this shiat for a long time now. Go ahead and google "comcast throttle Netflix". They aren't throttling it by textbook means but they leave the system in such a way that it get's terribly slow. Using a proxy/VPN will restore the speed. I can tether through my phone and have perfect HD streams. I go back to Comcast and it's barely 480p. Although my phone is a Verizon phone so now that trick probably wont work.

I'm currently grandfathered into unlimited data with my Verizon phone. If I want to upgrade they'll force me out of that. So, I don't know what to do when I decide I want a new phone. Does anyone offer an actual unlimited data plan?

Fark Verizon and fark Comcast.

I have a "choice" between Comcast and shiatty AT&T DSL. Although apparently AT&T is running fiber to my area. I should probably look into that. Anyone have any experience or knowledge with AT&Ts fiber service?

Descartes:It's worth treating the rep's statement with a great deal of skepticism; the chances that this one person is completely aware of everything the company is doing seems pretty remote.

Seriously, who is stupid enough to believe that a minimum wage earning rep in a call center had access to the knowledge that they were doing this, and no one has leaked a memo about this on the internet.

[www.mediabistro.com image 344x226]

I came here basically to say exactly that. While I'm sure this may eventuallybe a reality, one chat-support rep does not a corporate action make.

Oh, and my work cell phone is through Verizon. I got it last year which is after they removed unlimited data from it's consumer plans. My work phone has unlimited data. They're still offering it but only to other corporations and not to us peasants.

It shall be unlawful for any person engaged in commerce, in the course of such commerce, either directly or indirectly, to discriminate in price between different purchasers of commodities of like grade and quality, where either or any of the purchases involved in such discrimination are in commerce, where such commodities are sold for use, consumption, or resale within the United States or any Territory thereof or the District of Columbia or any insular possession or other place under the jurisdiction of the United States, and where the effect of such discrimination may be substantially to lessen competition or tend to create a monopoly in any line of commerce, or to injure, destroy, or prevent competition with any person who either grants or knowingly receives the benefit of such discrimination, or with customers of either of them: Provided, That nothing herein contained shall prevent differentials which make only due allowance for differences in the cost of manufacture, sale, or delivery resulting from the differing methods or quantities in which such commodities are to such purchasers sold or delivered: Provided, however, That the Federal Trade Commission may, after due investigation and hearing to all interested parties, fix and establish quantity limits, and revise the same as it finds necessary, as to particular commodities or classes of commodities, where it finds that available purchasers in greater quantities are so few as to render differentials on account thereof unjustly discriminatory or promotive of monopoly in any line of commerce; and the foregoing shall then not be construed to permit differentials based on differences in quantities greater than those so fixed and established: And provided further, That nothing herein contained shall prevent persons engaged in selling goods, wares, or merchandise in commerce from selecting their own customers in bona fide transactions and not in restraint of trade: And provided further, That nothing herein contained shall prevent price changes from time to time where in response to changing conditions affecting the market for or the marketability of the goods concerned, such as but not limited to actual or imminent deterioration of perishable goods, obsolescence of seasonal goods, distress sales under court process, or sales in good faith in discontinuance of business in the goods concerned.

CtrlAltDestroy:Comcast has been doing this shiat for a long time now. Go ahead and google "comcast throttle Netflix". They aren't throttling it by textbook means but they leave the system in such a way that it get's terribly slow. Using a proxy/VPN will restore the speed. I can tether through my phone and have perfect HD streams. I go back to Comcast and it's barely 480p. Although my phone is a Verizon phone so now that trick probably wont work.

I'm currently grandfathered into unlimited data with my Verizon phone. If I want to upgrade they'll force me out of that. So, I don't know what to do when I decide I want a new phone. Does anyone offer an actual unlimited data plan?

Fark Verizon and fark Comcast.

I have a "choice" between Comcast and shiatty AT&T DSL. Although apparently AT&T is running fiber to my area. I should probably look into that. Anyone have any experience or knowledge with AT&Ts fiber service?

TuteTibiImperes:Headso: internet folks need to get on it like the NRA does and start punishing every single official who votes against net neutrality or even speaks against it, time to ruin careers.

I have very little positive to say about the gun lobby, but you're right, dang it if they aren't effective.

Companies like Microsoft, Google, and obviously Netflix are in the pro-net-neutrality camp, so there's some big money to make a push.

Its the sort of thing every lobby does, just that the NRA has a lot more public support than most. Even with that tho, it drags its feet on a lot of pro-gun issues.

If there was an equally popular lobby for the Internet then we might see some action. The problem I fear is that you've got a lot of big money (like the very same google) that stand to make a mint as soon as they figure out how to make the laws work in their favor.

I was waiting for another day of outrage-outage when the FCC ruling was handed down, but the powers that be don't seem to be as vocal about upholding net neutrality as before.Google could probably get its way by capping search access to congresses domains or putting up some fake tollbooths, so people can get a hint as to what's coming.

It shall be unlawful for any person engaged in commerce, in the course of such commerce, either directly or indirectly, to discriminate in price between different purchasers of commodities of like grade and quality, where either or any of the purchases involved in such discrimination are in commerce, where such commodities are sold for use, consumption, or resale within the United States or any Territory thereof or the District of Columbia or any insular possession or other place under the jurisdiction of the United States, and where the effect of such discrimination may be substantially to lessen competition or tend to create a monopoly in any line of commerce, or to injure, destroy, or prevent competition with any person who either grants or knowingly receives the benefit of such discrimination, or with customers of either of them: Provided, That nothing herein contained shall prevent differentials which make only due allowance for differences in the cost of manufacture, sale, or delivery resulting from the differing methods or quantities in which such commodities are to such purchasers sold or delivered: Provided, however, That the Federal Trade Commission may, after due investigation and hearing to all interested parties, fix and establish quantity limits, and revise the same as it finds necessary, as to particular commodities or classes of commodities, where it finds that available purchasers in greater quantities are so few as to render differentials on account thereof unjustly discriminatory or promotive of monopoly in any line of commerce; and the foregoing shall then not be construed to permit differentials based on differences in quantities greater than those so fixed and established: And provided further, That nothing herein contained shall prevent persons engaged in selling goods, wares, or merchandise in commerce from selecting their own customers in bona fide transactions and not in restraint of trade: And provided further, That nothing herein contained shall prevent price changes from time to time where in response to changing conditions affecting the market for or the marketability of the goods concerned, such as but not limited to actual or imminent deterioration of perishable goods, obsolescence of seasonal goods, distress sales under court process, or sales in good faith in discontinuance of business in the goods concerned.

Unfortunately they will toss you in a class action and in Ten years you will get a $5 off your first month of internet service coupon

I lived in a nerd flop house and we had comcast. We would get throttled all the time. It would happen at all hours including really late night. We lived around plenty of old people so you know the network wasnt clogged. Plenty of us were legally downloading and streaming plus gaming and it would be fine til it would randomly slow down. Resetting routers didnt work, we just had to wait out the throttle.

Then we had a guy move out and had issues with them switching over so we stopped paying for a month. The funny thing was we logged into the tech page and followed the tech directions to turn it back on. Before we could get them to switch accounts to a new person they had someone come out and cut all lines going into the house after the drop. They they tried to charge the guy that left thousands of dollars for the equipment from the previous accounts at that address.

BTW, I'm paying for a 50mb/s service with Comcast. There is NO excuse for sub 480p quality and taking 2-3 minutes to buffer after loading a new video or skipping ahead/behind EVERY SINGLE EVENING. But only the evening. Mornings are fine. Only Netlix and Youtube are effected during those hours. Other streaming sites are perfectly fine while at the same time those 2 are slow as hell.

CtrlAltDestroy:BTW, I'm paying for a 50mb/s service with Comcast. There is NO excuse for sub 480p quality and taking 2-3 minutes to buffer after loading a new video or skipping ahead/behind EVERY SINGLE EVENING. But only the evening. Mornings are fine. Only Netlix and Youtube are effected during those hours. Other streaming sites are perfectly fine while at the same time those 2 are slow as hell.

I see then complaints but I never have an issue. Maybe because I'm in Comcast's backyard? I live in South Jersey and would take me 15 minutes to drive to the Comcast tower in Philly

CtrlAltDestroy:Comcast has been doing this shiat for a long time now. Go ahead and google "comcast throttle Netflix". They aren't throttling it by textbook means but they leave the system in such a way that it get's terribly slow. Using a proxy/VPN will restore the speed. I can tether through my phone and have perfect HD streams. I go back to Comcast and it's barely 480p. Although my phone is a Verizon phone so now that trick probably wont work.

I'm currently grandfathered into unlimited data with my Verizon phone. If I want to upgrade they'll force me out of that. So, I don't know what to do when I decide I want a new phone. Does anyone offer an actual unlimited data plan?

Fark Verizon and fark Comcast.

I have a "choice" between Comcast and shiatty AT&T DSL. Although apparently AT&T is running fiber to my area. I should probably look into that. Anyone have any experience or knowledge with AT&Ts fiber service?

NickelP:rwhamann: What's frustrating is end consumers defending it because their "team" says net neutrality is anti-competitive and hurts jobs, and they just go,along with it. Tribalism is awesome,,eh?

I don't think any consumers want to kill net neutrality. This is a game being fought between Google, ms, Netflix, etc and Verizon, att, time warner, Comcast. Its mega corps vs mega corps. No one involved gives a fark what the consumers think.

Tell my Facebook feed. I see two bit lower or middle class republicans criticizing net neutrality like they've got the talking points tattooed on their asses that morning. It's not everyday, but it happens enough to demonstrate once again that people will vote against their interests to support their tribe

styckx:CtrlAltDestroy: BTW, I'm paying for a 50mb/s service with Comcast. There is NO excuse for sub 480p quality and taking 2-3 minutes to buffer after loading a new video or skipping ahead/behind EVERY SINGLE EVENING. But only the evening. Mornings are fine. Only Netlix and Youtube are effected during those hours. Other streaming sites are perfectly fine while at the same time those 2 are slow as hell.

I see then complaints but I never have an issue. Maybe because I'm in Comcast's backyard? I live in South Jersey and would take me 15 minutes to drive to the Comcast tower in Philly

This, that's not to say there aren't problems. Local issues could be your local head end or even the drop to your house. There are plenty of places for signal issues including your equipment. I know I had to get my modem replaced because it would cause my connection to lag out which was noticeable in games. Its not throttling Netflix for no other reason is they are under a closer eye thanks to the NBC deal

CtrlAltDestroy:DeathByGeekSquad: I have full 1080 streams without issue on my Comcast line.

Look it up online. I'm not the only one experiencing the exact same set up symptoms.

Netflix and Youtube both run extremely slow in the evening. But if I switch to a non Comcast service (like through my phone) or go through a VPN/proxy both services run perfectly fine.

Again, many people have the exact same happenings.

The fixes/workarounds that I've seen are using a proxy, VPN, or even a IPv6 tunnel. Hide where the traffic is coming from and suddenly there's no more slow down. Amazing.

The complaints are minor and there is zero concrete evidence Comcast is throttling. If some blogger claims Verizon is throttling and it is making nationwide press.. Then why isn't Comcasts alleged throttling getting the same? From what I see the people complaining is a small minority in comparisons to Comcast's subscriber base. I mean think. If Comcast's entire subscriber base was getting 480p Netflix it would be on every news outlet possible. It isn't. Its on Reddit and Comcast forums

It wasn't until Blizzard stepped up to the rally of thier playerbase that Rogers here in Canada even admitted what we all knew about their practices of actively disrupting torrent connections. I heard they took steps to white list Blizzard's clients but that's it. Back when I was using Rogers I could see the attempts to snip all outbound connections if you had any torrent active client, all outbound connections, not just torrent ones (ssh etc).

CtrlAltDestroy:Comcast has been doing this shiat for a long time now. Go ahead and google "comcast throttle Netflix". They aren't throttling it by textbook means but they leave the system in such a way that it get's terribly slow. Using a proxy/VPN will restore the speed. I can tether through my phone and have perfect HD streams. I go back to Comcast and it's barely 480p. Although my phone is a Verizon phone so now that trick probably wont work.

I'm currently grandfathered into unlimited data with my Verizon phone. If I want to upgrade they'll force me out of that. So, I don't know what to do when I decide I want a new phone. Does anyone offer an actual unlimited data plan?

Fark Verizon and fark Comcast.

I have a "choice" between Comcast and shiatty AT&T DSL. Although apparently AT&T is running fiber to my area. I should probably look into that. Anyone have any experience or knowledge with AT&Ts fiber service?

I've used both recently, (Comcast / Att DSL2). I hate to say it, but Att DSL by far outperformed the Comcast service rated at twice the bandwidth.

It's not that Comcast was slow. I'd get great speed reports when that speed-boost crap "Kicked in". Problem is that would last ~30 seconds, and any service where I was chucking serious data around would then screech to a halt. Netflix, YouTube, torrents, simple ftp transfers. Anything that started sucking data for longer than a few minutes was slowed to completely unacceptable levels. (I was not pulling anywhere near there suspected limit levels either, never more than 50GB a month.

Att, while not as fast at the top end, has never appeared to throttle me in any way. I get what I get, always. Large transfers, streaming, many users at once, no difference in service ever. DSL has certainly come a long way in the last 10 years. No complaints

italie:CtrlAltDestroy: Comcast has been doing this shiat for a long time now. Go ahead and google "comcast throttle Netflix". They aren't throttling it by textbook means but they leave the system in such a way that it get's terribly slow. Using a proxy/VPN will restore the speed. I can tether through my phone and have perfect HD streams. I go back to Comcast and it's barely 480p. Although my phone is a Verizon phone so now that trick probably wont work.

I'm currently grandfathered into unlimited data with my Verizon phone. If I want to upgrade they'll force me out of that. So, I don't know what to do when I decide I want a new phone. Does anyone offer an actual unlimited data plan?

Fark Verizon and fark Comcast.

I have a "choice" between Comcast and shiatty AT&T DSL. Although apparently AT&T is running fiber to my area. I should probably look into that. Anyone have any experience or knowledge with AT&Ts fiber service?

I've used both recently, (Comcast / Att DSL2). I hate to say it, but Att DSL by far outperformed the Comcast service rated at twice the bandwidth.

It's not that Comcast was slow. I'd get great speed reports when that speed-boost crap "Kicked in". Problem is that would last ~30 seconds, and any service where I was chucking serious data around would then screech to a halt. Netflix, YouTube, torrents, simple ftp transfers. Anything that started sucking data for longer than a few minutes was slowed to completely unacceptable levels. (I was not pulling anywhere near there suspected limit levels either, never more than 50GB a month.

Att, while not as fast at the top end, has never appeared to throttle me in any way. I get what I get, always. Large transfers, streaming, many users at once, no difference in service ever. DSL has certainly come a long way in the last 10 years. No complaints

Strange.. Never have that issue either.. I average just over 300GB of bandwidth a month.. FTP/Steam downloads etc are always rock solid at my max bandwidth limit..

So, talking about it at the source and one of the web's largest forum sites just doesn't make sense to you?

Netflix and Youtube are the ONLY streaming sites that are effected for me and many others. Switching to a non Comcast connection has perfectly fast speeds for both. That means that the issue with with Comcast.

Here's some more. And people who fixed their issues by hiding the traffic from Comcast.

There's plenty more. But if you want to call me a liar then fark you. It happens every single day (that I use Netflix). Using a method to hide where the traffic is coming from stops the slowdown from happening. Adding another place to route where the traffic goes before it reaches you makes it go faster. Go ahead and handwave that away if you want. After this, I wont be responding to you. Call it running away if you want. I don't really care. I wont waste my time on fruitless endeavors. It's not worth even the remote possibility of getting annoyed over.

So, citizen, you thought impartial common-carrier behavior would last forever? You thought the commercially-owned Internet would remain fair? You probably thought all the nice-guy free stuff from Google would remain nice-guy and free didn't you? You probably thought Internet news sources were just supposed to happen for free, didn't you? There is always, always a price.

BTW, I might be kinda irritable this morning due to outside factors in my life at the moment. If I come off like a dick, I apologize. My patience has been stretched rather thin as of late. Car troubles, women troubles, money troubles, etc.

CtrlAltDestroy:Comcast has been doing this shiat for a long time now. Go ahead and google "comcast throttle Netflix". They aren't throttling it by textbook means but they leave the system in such a way that it get's terribly slow. Using a proxy/VPN will restore the speed. I can tether through my phone and have perfect HD streams. I go back to Comcast and it's barely 480p. Although my phone is a Verizon phone so now that trick probably wont work.

I'm currently grandfathered into unlimited data with my Verizon phone. If I want to upgrade they'll force me out of that. So, I don't know what to do when I decide I want a new phone. Does anyone offer an actual unlimited data plan?

Fark Verizon and fark Comcast.

I have a "choice" between Comcast and shiatty AT&T DSL. Although apparently AT&T is running fiber to my area. I should probably look into that. Anyone have any experience or knowledge with AT&Ts fiber service?

I have unlimited data on my phone with T-mobile. However, they know when you are tethering, so you need hotspot to be able to connect your devices to your phone's wifi. So I added 4.5 GB of hotspot to my account as well. The phone itself can do what it wants with unlimited data. But all my wifi devices share a pool of the 4.5 GB hotspot whenever I tether. Allegedly, if you use droid, there are apps and hacks to trick t-mobile into not detecting when you tether. They never worked for me.

I imagine that what is happening is that heavy users are flagged and when traffic is heavy (evening) their IPs are throttled on high bandwidth URLs. It is a subtle way of reducing demand on their network. It has legitimate purposes in wireless where spectrum is an absolute limitation, while a cable company can just split the node if demand increases in a certain area.

ThatBillmanGuy:CtrlAltDestroy: Comcast has been doing this shiat for a long time now. Go ahead and google "comcast throttle Netflix". They aren't throttling it by textbook means but they leave the system in such a way that it get's terribly slow. Using a proxy/VPN will restore the speed. I can tether through my phone and have perfect HD streams. I go back to Comcast and it's barely 480p. Although my phone is a Verizon phone so now that trick probably wont work.

I'm currently grandfathered into unlimited data with my Verizon phone. If I want to upgrade they'll force me out of that. So, I don't know what to do when I decide I want a new phone. Does anyone offer an actual unlimited data plan?

Fark Verizon and fark Comcast.

I have a "choice" between Comcast and shiatty AT&T DSL. Although apparently AT&T is running fiber to my area. I should probably look into that. Anyone have any experience or knowledge with AT&Ts fiber service?

I have unlimited data on my phone with T-mobile. However, they know when you are tethering, so you need hotspot to be able to connect your devices to your phone's wifi. So I added 4.5 GB of hotspot to my account as well. The phone itself can do what it wants with unlimited data. But all my wifi devices share a pool of the 4.5 GB hotspot whenever I tether. Allegedly, if you use droid, there are apps and hacks to trick t-mobile into not detecting when you tether. They never worked for me.

For tethering, usually just switching to a CM Based rom is all that's necessary..maybe an apn + sqlite tweak for T Mobile using a stock rom.

I have AT&T, don't have a tethering plan, can't tether stock (without tweaking a sqlite db), and tether everyday with my Atrix HD running a custom rom. Currently using the latest Kit Kat Carbon Rom.